Some call burning flesh a `rite of passage’. Others say it’s an ugly throwback to slavery. But it’s a hot fashion statement, writes Lonnae O’Neal Parker Imagine a carefully fashioned coat-hanger, slow-roasted over the blue-green flame of a Magic Chef range, heading for the fleshy expanse of your upper arm, your chest or the side […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby We have reached that time of the year when people begin to talk in clichs. Stuff like: “We don’t believe that we are favourites for the match. Just because it’s a northern hemisphere team we’re expected to win comfortably, but we won’t be taking them for granted. A test match is a […]
The technology explosion has given a new dimension to office warfare, writes Chris Ball Imagine opening your office post and finding a memo from the boss attacking you in highly abusive terms. But we live in the age of the electronic office, and memos are now often e-mails. Click on “address” after receiving a particularly […]
Andrew Worsdale Very infrequently does a movie stick to the top of my mouth. I’ve become inured to seeing mad-ass Hollywood rubbish, that our dear distributors launch on the stupefied public with as many as 37 prints, to satisfy movie mall “taste”. Happy Together is made by Hong Kong wunderkind Wong Kar-Wai and is released […]
Neil Manthorp Cricket The worst possible news for England became the best thing that could have happened to Dominic Cork during the first Test. Darren Gough’s broken finger was the result of crass thinking from the dressing room. Amazingly, Alec Stewart declared after the match that his team had “played risky and daring cricket” and […]
Ann Eveleth A row broke out this week between the Department of Agriculture and other parties engaged in the campaign against land degradation. The heated fracas – on the eve of World Desertification Day next Wednesday – follows a decision by national and provincial agriculture officials to disband a broad-based steering committee set up in […]
Adam Mars-Jones THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS McNULTY by Sebastian Barry (Picador, R110) Sebastian Barry’s new novel is so full of magnetising beauty that it all but harasses a reader into submission. You can try to protest, to say, “I’m a reader and you’re a book, can we not keep this on a professional basis?”, but […]
Alex Sudheim On show in Durban As a storyteller, Alson Ntshangase is more of a Dostoevsky than a Wordsworth. His darkly glowing paintings betray the workings of a mind far more interested in the skull beneath than the skin above. “If I start painting a rose I feel I am wasting my paint because I […]
Craig Bishop Port Elizabeth business leaders, trade unionists and politicians are uncorking the champagne in anticipation of the go- ahead for development of Africa’s first deep-water port at Coega, about 7km outside the city. But a growing band of environmentalists and social critics are determined to take the fizz out of their celebrations. They are […]
Karlin Lillington reports on the real power behind innovation on the Web It’s late night in Johannesburg, as a computer screen glows blue with a live video feed. Somewhere in a small studio in mid-afternoon Los Angeles, a sultry blonde with waist-length hair straddles a desk and leaves little to the imagination. Wearing nothing but […]